The British Conservatives and the EU: Behind the Rhetoric
Wednesday 15 July 2009By EU Reporter Correspondents
The EU has always been controversial in Britain but since 1997 Labour government policy has been to maintain traditional ‘red lines’ to protect British interests while at the same time trying to stay in the mainstream of European thinking on integration. However, with a lead in national polls of 12 to 22 points, and an overwhelming win at the European elections, it is now almost taken for granted that within the next year David Cameron and the Conservative Party, visibly far less enthusiastic about European integration, will sweep New Labour from power. So what will the probable arrival of a Cameron’s government mean for Europe?
Today’s Conservative Party does think in the way it used to, when for years the subject of Europe split the membership, most famously leading to Margaret Thatcher’s resignation in 1990. Today, under David Cameron, there is now supposed to be a consensus and it is unashamedly eurosceptic.
Lord Ashdown, speaking at Chatham House in June, said that old Conservative friends had told him that the Party is today “more vociferously anti-European than any British political party has ever been, not excluding militant Labour,” and that he was totally “bewildered” by the “blindness of the Conservatives when it comes to Europe”. Ashdown, it must be said, is a former leader of the Liberal Democrats, but his comments are representative of liberal opinion that sees as absurd and damaging the Conservatives’ decision to leave the EPP and so unequivocally reject the Lisbon Treaty. Nonetheless various polls and elections have shown there is no doubt that rejection of the European political mainstream has a very high degree of public backing.
Much has been made of the party’s decision to leave the EPP group in the European Parliament to form the new ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists Group). This is, however, a bit of a misnomer. Their new partners are neither racists nor fascists but rather, as the Economist put it, “nationalists or social conservatives whose views hardly chime with the moderate messages pushed by David Cameron.” They are united solely by their opposition to further integration. But even their disparate views are tempered with the innovation of no group whip. Accusations that the UK will lose influence through the move are flimsy at best, since Britain will always be an important European country with which it is worth keeping good relations and no parliamentary repositioning can change that. Moreover the party’s MEPs may even gain more attention than previously by dominating a whole group. Whether this was the “honourable thing” to do, as Mark Francois, Shadow Minister for Europe, told EU Reporter, is a matter for debate. But the fact remains it will not be as damaging as some were predicting.
What is more significant is the Conservatives’ attitude to the Lisbon Treaty. Mr Francois says that his party fails to see any need for treaty change, with the flow of directives and other work continuing, even following the accession of 12 new member states. If not fully ratified when they form a government a referendum would be called. The reality as it stands, however, is that Gordon Brown seems to have survived the near-revolutionary expenses scandal and that he is not likely to call an election until next spring or perhaps late this autumn at the very earliest, therefore after the Irish vote again.
This will actually please Cameron who has scored many points on Labour’s referendum promise without actually having to fight an election on Europe. However, in this treaty scenario Conservatives have repeatedly said they “will not let matters rest there”, and have spoken about the need for renegotiation with Brussels. The problem is that no-one has actually defined what these phrases actually mean in policy terms.
Many such as Lord Garel-Jones, former Conservative Europe minister, have said that opposition parties are always more critical of the EU and then suddenly “all behave more sensibly when in government”, the implication being that the basic pragmatism of having to govern will tone down eurosceptic language. Indeed it is easy to imagine a Cameron with a seat at the Council, eager to exploit new foreign policy opportunities, perhaps like Blair did when he first came to power.
The difference this time is that both the Conservative Party and the British public are markedly more opposed to the European project than a decade ago. A recent YouGov poll showed how whereas in 1995 roughly the same proportion of people supported or opposed further integration, today, the numbers are heavily stacked against it. Furthermore, the Party has created an expectation that once in power it will actively attempt to satisfy this euroscepticism, thus creating a dilemma for a party united in its opposition to the status quo, but not in what should come in its stead.
The Conservative Party is now actively looking at numerous options for fulfilling this expectation and we should expect to see a lot clearer message in the new manifesto, which will probably be ready, in some form at least, by the autumn. Three issues likely to feature are European financial regulation, the social chapter and a new look on subsidiarity.
The City of London possibly under threat in new proposals it will seem logical for the Party to fight its corner in discussions on new regulations. On ‘Social Europe’, it is nothing new that the Conservatives oppose any social competences being shared with other member states and would want to head back to towards the opt-out of the social chapter John Major negotiated in the nineties (that Blair later discarded). Mr Francois is clear that issues such as the working-time directive should be for individual countries to decide. This stance is backed by groups such as the CBI, the leading British business lobby group, but with social aspects to many sections of EU law it will be no small challenge disentangling them and defining a new opt-out.
The last point is one that would reverberate most with voters: that the EU is too centralised. Mr Francois insists “this continual surrender of power to the centre risks distancing elites more and more from the people they are supposed to represent.” How to satisfy voters and yet not cause institutional wrangling the likes of which has gone on for so long now, is a complex challenge, however. One interesting proposal was suggested by LSE law professor Damian Chalmers in the Times on 5 June. Chalmers suggests the establishment of a “constitutional council” that would judge on the viability of an EU policy’s implementation if 50,000 people petitioned for it and so be able to block what was judged to be inappropriate for the UK. In an innovative way this possible idea could bring Europe back to the voters, whilst maintaining the “best bits” of the EU.
It is at least fair to assume that a Conservative government would be less outwardly enthusiastic about EU initiatives. At the same time it is not likely to demand too many radical reforms, although there will definitely be an expectation to produce some sort of visible change. This depends on consensus being reached on what change that should actually be, a challenge far greater than just reaffirming the status quo. It will then be interesting to see if in the coming months, the Conservatives can provide substance to their vision on Europe that could then perhaps be used constructively across the continent, or whether Europe again starts to split the party as they take the reins of power.
FROM THE JULY 2009 PRINT EDITION